Tag Archives: hype

In the blink of an eye over one thousand days have passed, and where have we been? The blog has been drier than California and the once so steady beat of the war drum has echoed of to a better place. But today, we celebrate the return of the original conquistadores of the mobile platform. Time to resurface.

So what have we done during this era of non-awesomness? Spent ages just walking in circles, “just to make the point”? Becoming the new champions of open source? Doing backstrokes in the good ol’ money bin? Nobody knows, but if you look closely, some apps may have flown under the radar and made the world a slightly less pointless place.

But here we are now, so let us entertain you. In the coming days, weeks, years or maybe never, we will release something so fun, clever and awesome and so god damn innovative that it will change every social gamers life forever. We call it The Future of Gaming. Vasco da Gama. So stay tuned for more news, cuz that thing coming over the hill is a monster. A monster!
In the meantime, check out Flip! One of our kick ass developers has infiltrated a local firm and helped them make a genre defining game. It’s a touch friendly version of one of the few board games that still hasn’t been conquered by the human mind, so the AI here is truly remarkable. Yup, it’s the beloved simulation of the race war: Reversi. You owe it to yourself and your inner demon to check out this baby. It’s free as in free beer, and takes up less space than Top Gun at 4K, so hurry up before its to late! And even though the developers gives it away for free, feel free to buy me a beer next time we meet if you like it.

Say hello to our latest app! Status Report is a combined client for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Foursquare (so far) that mixes all of your feeds into one grand unified feed. It also combines mirrored updates into one, for when someone mirrors their Twitter posts into their Facebook stream, or tweets every Instagram shot and you follow them on both services.

It also has support for liking, commenting, retweeting, favoriting etc. depending on the service the update comes from. You can also write new status updates and choose which of your connected services you want to send them from.

When following links you can save them to Instapaper for later reading regardless of which service the link was posted to.

I can’t even remember what life was like before this app when I had to tap through a whole bunch of different apps several times a day just to get the lay of the land. It has totally changed my life, maybe it will change yours too! It’s just 99 cents on the App Store so give it a try and tell us what you think 😀

What’s going on in the world of ÖeG lately? Well Gonas has become too old for music festivals and startups but we’re still going strong anyway. Mia’s undying love for intuitive interaction and my obsession for nerdy stuff continues to breed new apps for your enjoyment. Or your kid’s enjoyment if you have one. Yup, ÖeG has gone pedagogical and I’m announcing the results here on the blawgh today! Actually we released these apps months ago but I haven’t written about them on the blog yet, for the simple reason most parents and 3-year olds don’t read blogs. But then I thought, hey even if you don’t have kids you may be interested in the fact that we are still alive, kicking and making awesome apps. Anyway here they are:

Kids ABC

A simple educational app/game for iPad and iPhone where kids can learn the names of animals. Available in English and Swedish. A fairly big update is almost ready and will be released soon!

Who was it?

Similar app for iPad and iPhone where you learn to recognize the droppings and tracks of different animals. Also available in English and Swedish.

In the next few days we will reveal an entirely different (non-kidz) app which is currently in closed beta testing! Stay tuned and support the troops.

Warcode went live on the App Store yesterday as some of you may have noticed, and it’s been a huge success so far 🙂 Thanks everyone who have downloaded it and extra thanks to all who bought the full version.

The most frequent feedback we’re getting is 1) you want updated graphics and 2) there is still a bug with the game crashing after finishing a level, most likely only affecting iOS version 4.1. Also 3) you want the game to run on iPod touch, but unfortunately it doesn’t have an auto-focus camera and that makes the barcode scanning unusable

You’ll be happy to know we’re already planning for update 1.1 which will address both these points! Our graphical and interaction designer Mia has a bunch of ideas for refreshing the app’s interface and I have noticed a bunch of small bugs aside from the crashing that will be rectified. On the roadmap are also a greater assortment of warriors and equipment. Unfortunately I’ve caught the cold so I’m mostly lying around in bed making Fred Durst-like noises at the moment.

Our goal was to release a minimal viable product as early as possible and then iterate, and the version we have shipped works great for most people who are not still on an older version of the OS, so I’m happy about that! The feedback we have received from the launch has put us on a steady course and I really look forward to sharing the progress on the next version with you all!

I’m also stunned with the scores some people on the leaderboards are achieving, you guys are nuts.

Finally time to spill the beans to our loyal fans here on the blawgh! We’re currently wireframing and coding our latest app, which will be an iPhone game inspired by the 1991 classic, the game console Barcode Battler (check out this review if you haven’t heard of it).

I used to have one of those and while it sucked gameplay-wise, the idea was so much greater than the implementation and has been a source of inspiration for me ever since. It opened my eyes and made me understand that all those coded messages all around us can mean whatever we want, and our mission is to provide the means to interpret them in the most awesome way, by turning them into brutal warriors to fight epic battles in the vast deserts of what we today know is called cyberspace.

The app uses the iPhone’s camera to scan barcodes and is the first attempted game by Önders et Gonas, so we’re boldly going where we haven’t really been before a lot. Gonas is an avid gamer of course, and previous titles in his solo career include gems such as RotG, RotG 2, and the Duke Nukem Forever-esque vaporware “RotG 3D”.

This is also the first time we work with an external designer on an in-house project, the insanely talented interface design expert Mia Henriksson.

Watch this space and follow us on Twitter for the latest updates and info about an upcoming beta testing program, and of course the App Store release!

We are looking for any feedback, ideas, reactions or anything! Tell us what’s on your mind in the comments or via Twitter or email us!

As you may have noticed I also just updated the theme here on the Tap Gun blog. The new life!

Update: Holy shit, I’ve been stuck for hours now exploring the Barcode Battler related videos uploaded to YouTube. Try this one for size. This is a gold mine of bizarro.

2009 is nearing its end and space is getting hot again. Its basically a cyclical phenomenon. Space, dinosaurs, skateboard, hockey, and knights. Now we’re back in the space age.

Anyway as you all know our last app release, Nattstad, was a raging success and we’re now working hard on the second coming of Jesus, a.k.a Project Mustang 2. Have you guys seen Google Goggles? The Norwegian Yellow pages? Virgin Galactic? Yep, the bar for space age apps is rising. But like Stefan Holm in “På spåret” we’re going to show these clowns how it’s done. Stay tuned space apes.

So today we are officially launching development of our first iPhone application, codenamed Project Mustang. We will not disclose any details about the app yet, but it will enable party animals to optimize their night out and utilize their mobile computing power in the often time-critical decision-making process.